Download Alcohol and its journey through your body

FACTSHEETS
YOUR BODY
Alcohol and its journey
through your body
Your first sip of wine, beer or spirits is the beginning of alcohol’s
adventure round your body.
Through the stomach,
into the blood
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First, it heads towards your stomach. Some
alcohol will be absorbed by your stomach lining
and make its way through into your bloodstream.
Stronger alcoholic drinks tend to be absorbed
more quickly, especially if you’re doing shots. Fizzy
drinks, like champagne or mixers, can speed up
the process since the carbon dioxide they contain
accelerates alcohol’s journey to the small intestine.
How recently you’ve eaten also makes a difference
(that’s why it’s never a great idea to drink on an
empty stomach – the less food, the quicker the
alcohol will arrive in your bloodstream).(1)(2)
The rest of the alcohol (about two thirds) keeps on
going, squeezing into your bloodstream through
the walls of your small intestine.
It’s your blood that carries the alcohol round your
body. Here’s what it does when it gets to each
destination:
2.
The brain
The amount of alcohol in your bloodstream (your
‘blood alcohol concentration’) will determine how
much your brain is impaired – in other words, how
drunk you feel and act.
Alcohol is a depressant which takes its toll on
different parts of your brain:
• Cerebral cortex: processes your thoughts.
When it’s function is depressed by alcohol, you
can get the following effects:
- Y
ou become more talkative, self-confident
and less inhibited.
- You can’t judge or think as clearly as usual.
- Y
ou can have trouble seeing or hearing.
- Y
ou can’t feel pain as clearly. (This is
because the alcohol is affecting your brain’s
ability to process information.)
• Limbic system: controls emotions and
memory. The effects of alcohol mean that
emotions tend to be exaggerated (seriously,
you’re my best mate!) and your memory, er,
lost. If remembering nothing from your big night
out wasn’t enough, there’s also research to
suggest excessive alcohol can impair the ability
to create new memories too.(3)
• Cerebellum: coordinates the movement
of your muscles. When the depressant
effects of alcohol get here, you can become
uncoordinated and your balance can be
affected (ever wondered where the phrase
‘falling down drunk’ comes from?).
3.
The heart
When there’s alcohol flowing
around your body, your heart
beats faster. This is because
alcohol is a ‘vasodilator’, which
means it makes your blood vessels
relax allowing more blood to flow
through the skin and tissues. As a
result, your blood pressure will
drop. To compensate,
and to make sure
your organs get
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all the blood they
need, your heart
rate increases.
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FACTSHEETS
YOUR BODY
The kidneys and
bladder
acetaldehyde, which the body recognises as toxic.
This is then broken down further into carbon dioxide
and water, which your body can then get rid of.
4 & 5.
The kidneys are there to filter your blood. They
make sure waste products are selectively expelled
from your body, while useful things like proteins
and amino acids are retained in your blood.
The kidneys also keep the amount of water in your
body constant – until alcohol gets involved, that
is. Alcohol is a diuretic (something that increases
the amount of urine your body produces). When
you drink too much your body ends up getting rid
of more water than it absorbs, and you become
dehydrated. As well as causing your parched throat
the next morning, dehydration is also behind the
headache, nausea and fatigue that makes up a
hangover.(4)
Alcohol also has an effect on your body’s
production of antiduretic hormone (also called
vasopressin) that usually tells the kidneys to
reabsorb water that would otherwise end up in the
bladder. Without this hormonal signal, the bladder
fills up with all the water from the fluid that you drink
(and those frequent trips to the toilet begin...)
6. Lungs
As the alcohol in your blood travels to your lungs,
some of it will evaporate into the air in the tiny lung
sacs known as alveoli, and be exhaled from your
body (your lovely ‘alcohol breath’). That’s why the
next day some people can smell like a cocktail of
last night’s stale beer and this morning’s toothpaste.
7. Skin
The blood flow to the skin increases, giving you that
appealing sweaty, flushed look.
The liver can only metabolise a certain amount of
alcohol per hour (usually around one unit). The rate
your body breaks down alcohol depends on your
body weight and gender. If you drink faster than
your liver can get rid of it, the level of alcohol in
your body rises – there’s a ‘topping up effect’. This
means it isn’t just the alcohol you drink there and
then that’s affecting you, it’s what you’ve had over
the last 12 hours or more as well. Alcohol keeps
going through your body at the rate of one unit an
hour. And as you continue drinking, you carry on
‘topping up’ the amount of alcohol in your body.
Too much alcohol in your system can make you
feel sick, slur your words or even pass out.(5)
The remaining 10% of alcohol that isn’t dealt
with by the liver, ends its journey round the body
through sweat, breath or directly through urine.
The morning after
As anyone who has ended the night throwing up in
a pub toilet knows, your body can only handle a
limited amount of alcohol, and the key to
avoiding a hangover is to stick to the
recommended limits. If you exceed
these, the nagging hangover that
often arrives the next day is a
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result of your body needing to
replace the fluids as well as the
minerals and vitamins it loses
through alcohol. Drinking water may
help ease some of the pain, but avoid
having ‘a hair of the dog’, which
will just start the process all
over again.(6)
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8. Liver
Your liver is responsible for breaking down (or
‘metabolising’) the alcohol in your body. Around
90% of the alcohol leaves your system this way.
The liver breaks alcohol down into a chemical called
Resources
(1) http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/
medicine/drug_faq.html
(2) http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/html/healthy_living/
lifestyle/alcohol/alcohol2.html
(3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/mar/22/
drugsandalcohol.uknews
(4) http://www.cks.library.nhs.uk/patient_information_leaflet/hangover
(5) Source Paton 2005. See http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/
resource/view.php?id=293381
(6) http://www.cks.library.nhs.uk/patient_information_leaflet/hangover
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Additional resources
http://www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/23068925/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A103140
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